Le Testament du docteur Cordelier (1961)

This is the penultimate film that I've booked for the Renoir season and it is something of a historical landmark, being the first joint production in France between a cinema company and television.  It actually begins in a TV studio with an introduction by the director himself (kind of like Hitchcock, but not so good!)  The story is a riff on the Jekyll and Hyde theme, with mad Dr. Cordelier attempting to isolate his soul but instead unleashing his evil counterpart.  Now I have seen all the classic US versions of this tale (Barrymore, March, Tracy) and they all include a transformation scene from good to evil and/or back again.  This has been omitted here, but the actor playing Cordelier and his alter ego, Opale, (Jean-Louis Barrault) was positively brilliant; you could well believe that they were two completely different people -- as did the rest of the cast.  Barrault was a barn-storming actor of his day, appearing in a number of classic films, but maybe something of a ham at times (think of him as the French Laurence Olivier -- and my apologies to anyone who worships the latter), but I can not fault his performance here.  Unfortunately he was surrounded by a number of actors who seemed in need of acting lessons and who were well over the top for no good reason; at least there was a rationale for Barrault's histrionics.